Accepting Change
by TheArchitectOfFate
Summary: A story of existence in the shadow of Chaos in the Jericho Reach. As time and space fall apart, a wanderer walks a lonely road on a path of survival and discovery. Hell is always closer than you think on a daemon world in the eye of the Hadex Anomaly. Existential cosmic horror.
1. Just Another Day

The light of the day was a ruined bloody orange beaming through my window when I woke up. If time was a metric here, I would say it would be perhaps just past ten am. Just another day, or what could be called a day where I lived. My eyes strained to conceive my bedroom as it would manifest itself today. Every day was a change from the day before.

It had partially glitched out during last night's ichor storm, where an unrelenting rain of red fluid had beaten down on the ramshackle roof of what used to be my family home. At least the red rain wasn't blood this time, only a strange oily fluid that smelled of sleep and pain. Flowers of the same color had bloomed on my windowsill, and were now reaching toward the light of what used to be our sun. They were at least pretty, I thought.

Now, to see to getting out of bed. A red flower yawned and smiled at me. That was pleasant. Think pleasant thoughts.

My bed was blessedly unchanged, a small normal place of normal in a land where nothing was normal anymore. It had not been normal in some time. In fact, I had scarce the memory of what the term even meant, a form of Chaos-induced jamais vu, I supposed. Now that this world had been claimed by the Warp, my priorities shifted; my desire was to simply exist and survive the unsurviveable. My mother, who had long since vanished into the Glass Forest, had told me that I had been "blessed" with my willpower, and she told me to never let it go. I miss my mother, sometimes. Sometimes.

I swung my feet out from my blankets, planting them on the floor. My toes found a velveteen grip where there was once wood. Not terribly different, I thought with optimism. The walls, however, had been replaced with cobalt glass. Shapes within reflecting theoretical pasts and futures were revealed to me. I tried not to look too hard as I reached in a small chest in the corner to retrieve today's outfit.

Out of the corner of my eye, one of the shapes in the glass appeared to be my father, his mouth open in an eternal tormented scream. I don't look too hard, no.

I looked outside my window to confirm the weather for the moment. Still blood orange. The sun was always red here now, but sometimes it wasn't. This likely meant I would be burned unless I covered my skin, since the sun might be in a "bad mood" somehow to spite me. One day either yesterday or a month ago, it had turned blue when I was particularly morose, and had frozen the delirious tears right on my bare cheeks. Some days, it was moody, and that was just the way it was. I searched for a tunic to cover my arms, and some trousers to cover my legs. Shoes for feet, of course. I shook out my hair. It had turned white last night. Tying it back, I did not dwell on it. Just another change. So life goes on in the New World.

Stepping outside my modest cottage, I was thankfully alone today. There was a carpet of swaying smiling red flowers to greet me in the garden, and all turned their petaled heads to me as I opened the door. Nearly all smiled as I walked past to the small vegetable patch. I wondered what the flowers thought, if they could have thoughts?

I wondered if I had thoughts anymore? I tried not to dwell on it.

I walked to the vegetable patch. While I had been alone a moment ago, I was now no longer alone. There was a woman veiled in white standing in the middle of the garden. I did not look up to her face. The beings here had eyes that could trap you forever if you were not careful. I was always careful now. You had to be careful and not think too much here now. Ever since the Stranger came awhile ago, things had been a little wild on this planet. Actually, that was a bit of an understatement, but I try to have a sense of humor sometimes.

The coniferous trees hissed their approval. A flock of blue birds alighted from their branches into the sky.

I passed the woman without much incident, treating her as part of the scenery. I began to dig up some root vegetables for my food. One benefit of living on this world is that things would often grow quickly if you thought positively. I sometimes liked to come out here at night, when sheets of diaphanous carmine would sing their songs in the sky against the void of space. I'm actually coming around to liking the Warp-aurora here, the sky swimming to the heartbeat of the nearby Hadex Anomaly. It would put me in a good mood. When my mood was brightened, I would sing to the vegetables. They would grow, so I assumed they liked that too. It worked out pretty well, since the little roots were tasty and kept me well fed. I was also relatively free of mutation and madness, so I considered that I was doing something right.

Right?

Kneeling down, I began my harvest. I had a small canvas bag in arms, and I placed each vegetable in the sack. They were hand-sized, oblong, dark green, and inanimate. Good. I began to whistle as I bent down to dig each tuber, dreaming of a good stew to make for later. A few herbs spontaneously erupted nearby, and they were also picked for seasoning. As I dug, I lost track of time, but that was alright, because time often lost track of me. The sun had moved lazily across the sky, its light drawing long shadows in the bluish grass and the grinning red flowers. My canvas bag was now full, and I walked back to the cottage.

At home, I prepped, peeled, and sliced the little tubers for my one large meal of the day. They were placed in a big pot with the gathered herbs, and hung over a fire pit in my backyard. It was becoming a pleasant day, with a kind breeze that sometimes held the coy laughter of a long lost lover through my ear. It was always nice to remember, I thought, watching the stew bubble steadily. I just wished I had company to keep here once again. All the neighborhood was gone now. Some had simply vanished. Others had gone to the great silver towers when voices told them to. Many had presumed the events of the Stranger's passage as the apocalypse, the final end of the world. I knew better, however. I always liked to think positively.

"I like that," observed the voice of a little girl nearby as I stirred my vegetable stew. She wore a fluttering white night dress, and long blonde hair hung to her waist. Her fair skin was as pale as her crystal eyes. She had a wreath of tiny stars around her ears, and she floated a hand's width above the ground. It wasn't the first time I had seen her, so I tried to treat everything as normal.

"Can I have some?" she asked, her voice small and sweet. She floated toward the cauldron, and looked at me expectantly.

I nodded. She smiled.

A bowl had materialized in her hands, and a ladle had appeared in the air. A bowlful of steaming stew was placed gently in her tiny white hands. She inhaled the aroma of the stew, and smiled warmly. "This smells very good! You're a very good chef!"

It was best to always please this particular little girl when she showed up, so I was all too happy to offer her whatever I could. Truth be told, I knew deep down that I would cut off my left arm to please her. I don't know why I felt that way, but I did. It was always best to follow my gut. It had kept me alive for this long.

The light of the sun shifted from blood orange to a kinder golden. It was warm and comforting. The little girl sat down on a nearby tree stump, her legs crossed as she began to eat. I took my own bowl, and dished myself some stew. It did smell nice. It even seemed to have meat in it now. It was best not to think of such things, and just accept the change.

"Yum!" The girl said, happy. That made me smile. I continued to eat. After a few mouthfuls, a glass pitcher of a golden liquid appeared floating next to me. A glass followed suit. "My mummy makes good lemonade! Here!" The pitcher poured into a glass of citrus-smelling water. It looked quite refreshing.

I swore I saw the outline of a ghostly woman in white holding the pitcher for me, as if it was not simply levitating in midair. It looked somewhat familiar. I accepted the glass, and nodded my head at the girl.

"I like lemonade!" She said, drinking from her own glass. Her glittering, prismatic eyes were mesmerizing, and I reminded myself once again not to look too deeply. I finished the last bits of the hearty stew of meat and vegetables with a few bites.

"Thank you," I was finally brave enough to say words today.

"I like it when people are nice. You're nice!" She chirped. The little girl also finished her stew. As she placed her bowl down, it vanished from existence. She stood up again, and her gauzy night dress fluttered in the breeze. A laugh like tinkling bells sang through the air, and then, a distant scream sounded somewhere far off. I noted its direction as the girl began to float again. When I blinked, she appeared next to me as if time itself had hurried her along.

Reflexively, I jumped. She started to talk again, her face very close to mine, her smile enigmatic and knowing.

"You should visit the forest. Your mummy misses you."

She vanished into a thousand motes of multicolored light, dissolving once again into the landscape. I was left holding a pitcher of red liquid talking to no one.

So thusly time passes with terrifying change on the daemon world of Coranin.


	2. Nostalgia

I shouldn't think about the past too often, but sometimes, I can't help it.

Before everything happened, I had lived in a moderately sized cottage facing a salt marsh at the edge of a small village with a population of around a hundred. We were a modest group of farmers and tradesmen, satisfied with simple things and similar living. We were mostly happy, from what I remember. The geography of the land before the Stranger walked wasn't terribly remarkable. It was mostly green, wild, and undeveloped. As far as civilization went, our world had been undergoing a population boom. Offworlders numbering up to a million or so each year from the greater Imperium imported medicine, industry, and civilization. My father was very excited about it, and would return from the market every other day with ever more rumors of good things to come. Larger, more industrial farms had begun to spring up across the land over the last ten years, and we had begun to see many new faces when venturing out to trade with some of the other larger settlements. Most new people were friendly, some weren't, but to each their own. In our small village, we still lived our lives in bucolic bliss. Mostly untouched by the change around us, we were able to marvel at it from a distance. Neighbors were close and caring. Families of multiple generations lived modestly in cottages of varying sizes, which included mine. Children would play in the fields without a care in the world.

I miss my family.

The great salt marsh dominated our view. It provided us with good fishing and trapping, keeping our town well fed and traded. A few dozen paces from our back door, and the land sloped gently down into a vast, lush green swamp. Beyond the marsh, a bay of brackish water provided us with slow, easily caught fish. If you went fishing (and it wasn't too humid) you could make out the structures of a small city beyond the bay. There were large windows on tall buildings that reflected the sun like fire on the horizon during a sunset. I had never actually been there, but had promised myself that I would have an adventure and visit when I was older. Now, the view was obscured by a sudden strange forest, and no city was visible. Perhaps it was still there, I would wonder. Probably not.

Before he vanished, my best friend said that he knew of a great silver tower in the city beyond the bay, and that this heavenly place was where God lived; he had seen it in his dreams. We had a fight, and he gave me a black eye. He left and never came back. If regrets had a taste, they would be sour. I could almost taste it on my tongue.

When I was a child, I would spend my summers catching small land crabs with my friends. The swamp was teeming with wildlife, and many of the local children would play hide and seek games in the tall grass. These adventures would leave us covered in mud. After coming home, filthy and scolded by our laughing parents, the adults would take our prizes, and make a spiced feast of boiled crab to be shared with the rest of our neighbors. These were fond memories. They made me smile. Oh, to taste innocence again. However, once broken, the mirror remains in pieces.

I miss the gift of normal simple human interaction; so often I had taken it for granted before my world had broken. When I still had neighbors, there was much excitement as rumors of the Stranger snaked through our population. He had not actually been to our village, but there was nervous chatter, both giddy and fearful, that he was near. Excited rumors flourished that he had walked through the swamp on his trek through our land, and behind where he trod, the very land bent to his presence. The local drunk turned ravening maniac had called it a "blessing" from above before he vanished as well, but I wasn't so sure.

Everything is different now. Everyone is gone. In the wake of the Stranger, all things were clay.

Our village gradually emptied soon after the Stranger's arrival. There remained a few other modest cottages nearby, but they were all now abandoned. It wasn't just that the people had gone; in some instances, the dwelling itself would depart. One had grown long, birdlike legs and walked away one night, its occupant, an old grandmother, screaming and laughing as she was trapped within. Her cries continued to echo in the empty lot for months, and sometimes, if the wind was right, I could still hear her. It was as if the wind now held memories, turning nostalgia into dreadful music. If I listened too hard, I could hear other things too.

I'd rather not talk about that.

The salty swamp was gone. Nearly overnight, during a raging storm of black rain, the land had been transformed. Where there were once gently swaying grasses, trilling insects, and land crabs, there were now impossible trees twisted into paradoxical shapes that were difficult to look at. At the dawn of the morning following the black storm, the more adventurous of us were captivated by the new forest, and set out to investigate. Early on, the "Glass Forest" (we had a vote on what to name it) seemed to be a miracle, a captivating and beautiful thing that would no doubt, bring many visitors to our land; with the visitors, would come wealth. In the beginning, the bravest of us organized expeditions into the new landscape. It was discovered that while the structures retained a general suggestion of the shape of trees, they were not. Up close, it was said that they appeared to consist of tensile, glassy material. At a touch, each "tree" felt different as well, consisting of differing textures, and even temperatures. Their translucent trunks and boughs reflected light in many impossible colors that hurt the eye. Leaves of ice, blue fire, or even of black smoke adorned each branch; they were never still, swaying as if they were aquatic plants caressed by a gentle underwater current. Each tree was a unique ghostly reflection of nature. They were beautiful, yet deeply unsettling in a visceral way. When the wind blew, the strange leaves would almost sing, and fill the air with whispers just beyond one's range of hearing. Many people claimed they heard the callings of the shades of lost loved ones, or even reflections of themselves, promising them hope, wealth, power, and knowledge.

Even the secrets of the universe.

One by one, the ones of us who remained would fall captivated by the song of the glass trees. Away they went into the red night, searching for the beckoning calls they swore they heard. No one ever came back. I miss my mother sometimes. Sometimes.

When the nights were bright with the bruise of the Anomaly overhead, I could sometimes hear conversations carried on the wind of times past. My mother was among them, happy. She wasn't crying anymore over her shattered family. She sang for me too, sometimes, calling me by name. One night, I even heard an impossible discussion between myself and her; I had proclaimed that I was finally happy that I was with family again for all eternity. I tried to tune that out.

Time to stop this introspection, I thought. I realized I had been hyperventilating. Think pleasant thoughts. Calm down. My hands were clenched into fists. Relax.

I looked from side to side, searching for any more unexpected company. There was none. The little girl in the white night dress often visited me; her first sighting had occurred the night after the last of my village had gone. It had been snowing in the middle of what should have been summer, and she had appeared at my doorstep, barefoot and clutching a little stuffed toy. Reflexively, I opened the door to hurry her inside, desperately hopeful that someone had remained, even if I didn't recognize her face as being one of the local neighbor's children.

It became apparent that she was different. When inside and away from the snow, she gave me her little stuffed toy (it was a star with a smiling face), and told me that she hoped I would stay with her and play with her forever. She then dissolved into snow which streamed out of a barely open window, and I dissolved into inexplicable wracking sobs at her disappearance. Her star toy is still in my cottage. I keep it around for good luck.

The girl has returned a handful of times now, always in her white night dress and crown of stars. Sometimes she would speak to me, other times she simply observed me. She never seemed like she wanted to hurt me, but her visits were still unsettling, to say the least. I had deduced some time ago that if she wanted to kill me, she would have done so by now, whoever or whatever she was. It seemed she was gone for now, so I went about my day.

She wanted me to visit my mother in the Glass Forest, I thought with a chill. She said that my mother missed me. I'm not so sure that was a good idea. An intrusive, maddening question arose unbidden in myself that I was not even sure the concept of my mother even existed anymore in this place. Oh no, I was thinking too hard again. That needed to stop. I tried not to think about that.

Just carry on with your day, I thought.

With a shake, I rinsed my bowl in a small bucket and placed a lid over the stew to save for later. My glass of lemonade (which had turned red) was now gone. Brief panic arose until I discovered that I had simply toppled it over with a foot when I had been startled by the girl. Cautiously, I picked up the glass, and gave the remnants of the red liquid a sniff, hoping beyond hope that I hadn't been drinking what I suspected I had been drinking. To my relief, it merely smelled of a sweet red wine. Relief. I let a long breath go. You couldn't be too careful here. My fear turned rapidly into irritation; it was actually too bad I didn't have any more wine. I had drunk the last of what I had a few days ago. Maybe I could find more?

I was still breathing deeply to relax myself. My heart rate finally went down. Good. Blessed silence in the air. The golden sun was cooperating and friendly, and it felt very nice on my exposed skin. "Alright, this is as good a time as any to forage," I said to myself, rallying. There were still a few abandoned cottages that I had not yet rifled through for supplies, and since the weather was good and I had some time left before losing daylight, I decided to see what I could find in the shredded remains of what used to be my life.


	3. Cowardice

The sun was still gold when I made my way back inside my cottage. There was still a fair amount of time left in the day, by judging the position of the source of light in the sky. Uncommonly, the sun would occasionally set faster or slower than normal. I wasn't sure why. However, an early sunset was rare, so I estimated I had at least a few hours before the rise of the Anomaly in the sky. I never liked being too far away from home at night. The shadows that grew long in the terrible evening often had shapes that were more real than my flesh, and I didn't like it when I saw them. They didn't like me either, and would often scream and run away when I saw them, but sometimes, they would just watch me. Once, early on, I had gotten stuck outside during an early sunset. The roads had ways of turning around on themselves if you even thought for a second that you might be lost. Unfortunately, I didn't know any better then, and I had convinced myself that I was hopelessly lost; I kept passing by the same cottage many times on the cobbled road. On the ninth pass, shadowy men of pure oblivion stepped out of that cottage, their multiple eyes tiny pinpricks of brutal starlight being the only thing feature you could truly discern on their featureless heads.

I don't know how I could tell, but I knew they were laughing at me.

Their long sinuous fingers swiftly cut off my path, and I was barred from walking further.

They were silent as they surrounded me. Shivering, I did not move. I had waited for death. Death did not come. I stayed perfectly still, standing in the middle of the road holding my purloined provisions, and then, like smoke, they vanished into thin air at the first light of the (then blue) dawn. The path home became obvious once again, and I ran there.

I didn't leave the house for three days afterward. I've gotten a lot braver lately. You find out what you're actually made of in times like these.

And now, I would be going out in that direction again. My mother once called me cowardly when I had refused to kill a rodent in our pantry. If she could see me now. Maybe she could? Perhaps one of the echoes of her voice would hear me being perfectly still as I was surrounded and ripped to silent screaming pieces just to refill my wine stash? I laughed. I liked to have a sense of humor.

Over my shoulder, my large leather rucksack went. It smelled of sweat and salt. My father used to transport salted fish from the marsh to the market to trade for coin and provisions. We used to have a horse. His name was Bill. He was a stalwart gelding who had been with us for many seasons, carting fish and supplies to and from our house. Very early in the ruination of the world, when the rumors had first begun and before the Glass Forest had grown, he had bolted screaming into the night. We never found him. Forced to walk to the market on foot, we made heavy rucksacks out of his saddlebags. They were sturdy and weatherproof, and not too rough on the back.

It was only a few weeks after losing our horse that the market also vanished completely. Where there used to be bustling space of rustic trade, there were no lean-tos, no merchant caravans, no peddlers of fruits and vegetables camping and selling their wares. Where the congregation should have been there was now a perfectly circular, perfectly flat scorched area of ground extending the perimeter. Not even an insect remained in the area. We had simply left the noisy market one day, and arrived two days later to find everything gone. Other folks who had come from afar to trade were there gaping as well, surprised at their vanished livelihoods, crying curses to the sky with bitter tears. "We have no oil! My wife is sick! We will freeze come the frost!" I remembered a wild man from a few settlements over sobbing.

It was there that I saw my first murder. I still have a little dried blood on my rucksack.

Near to us was a familiar waif of a woman, and a skittish black horse equipped with two small casks bound at its flanks, along with a pack of glass vials filled with various unknown liquids in a netted bag. They were simply gazing silently at the empty area where the marketplace used to be. From what I knew, she usually traveled with her young son on horseback from someplace in the hills. I wasn't sure where from. Essential fragrant oils distilled from plants local to her area were her specialties. She was usually out-bartered and overshadowed by the larger perfumers that would frequent the marketplace, but enough people bought her wares that she was able to feed her little boy and her horse, wherever she had come from. This rakish woman was trying so desperately to survive, and while her oils didn't trade too well, it was something. Her oils had a new unexpected use now. They were flammable.

"You, girl! Spare some of your oils for my wife? I'm good for my clay. I will come back with payment in full on tomorrow!" The crying man had noticed the woman, and began to beg. There was an odd glint in his eye. He didn't even have his usual shipment of clay with him, and had come alone on foot with no horse. Why did he think she would ever entertain him for a trade? Suddenly, all the attention was on her. All the desperate faces of the market had now turned to the woman. "She has oil!" someone whispered near me.

"No, I can't. I'm waiting," she said, holding her arm protectively around her little boy. My father had touched my arm, watching the wailing man. Something felt wrong. We watched him advance to her, his face drawing up into a half-mad mockery of a smile.

His attention was actually on her tiny son, a towheaded boy not yet four years old.

"Why, hello there little man! Don't you think your mum should give up some of her oils to heat my home? My wife is sick, very sick. My horse died too. It's just so hard now." He kept advancing. He kept smiling.

No one was helping the young mother, and she clearly looked intimidated. Even her black horse began to nicker and stomp nervously nearby. Why were people behaving this way? An older, dirty woman behind the man shouted "...share what you have. Don't be greedy now, girl!" She only had one eye. The details you remember later.

My father whispered to me, "Look away." I looked away.

And then, she was dead. I think a rock had struck her head, because it was burst like a red fruit. When I opened my eyes, I saw her falling. Her little boy had retreated behind a nearby boulder. He wasn't even crying as he watched the mob convene on the frightened horse. The black horse was able to trample a few of the desperate people grabbing at its reins before it too fell, shattering one of the precious casks of oils beneath it. A cloying perfumed smell had filled the violent scene as my father stayed back, watching. The other cask was greedily fought over by a dozen scrabbling traders, and in the end, I never saw who actually got the prize. The fighting had not yet stopped when we had quietly turned around to walk home, my father's arm gripped just a bit too tightly on my shoulder. I wondered what happened to the little boy? I supposed none of that really matter too much anymore.

"Always remember who you are," he said to me. I made the promise to always remember that.

I tremble to think what the blasted marketplace would look like now. I couldn't get the eyes of the little boy out of my head. In my imagination, he was still there, waiting for someone to help him. Why didn't we help him? He could actually still be there now, ever since the impossible became the inevitable some time ago. Could I still save him?

I was shivering when I decided to stop thinking like that.

The blood splatter on my rucksack looked like a star, I thought. Just like the star toy I was given by the mysterious girl in the white night dress. I buckled each strap around my waist. Searching the room, I saw the stuffed star toy on my bookshelf. Good luck, I thought, as I packed the little white thing in a small external pouch. I would need it.


	4. Regrets

Rucksack strapped firmly to my back, and belly full of good stew, I opened my front door, and cautiously looked outside. To my left, there were a handful of twisted conifers that hadn't been turned into anything else yet, along with the main crudely cobbled road that eventually led through and out of the neighborhood. To my right was our empty, two horse stable, and the empty lot where the cottage had walked away on clawed legs. That place was permanently off limits, I had decided. Putting one foot in front of the other, I ventured outward.

The air was humid with late summer. There used to be the sounds of insects and animals in the wind. I missed them. I wondered about that scream I had heard earlier in the direction of the forest? What was that? I took a left turn, and I began my walk.

I passed two abandoned dwellings, their contents already looted for supplies. These close neighbors were quiet country people, and their homes had modest pantries filled with the normal staples of dried fish, leather, heating oil, straw, and wood for fire. The closest neighbor was a couple who had just witnessed the birth of their first grandchild, a girl, by their eldest son before all of this happened. As was often custom in our settlement, they had all lived together, their larger multigenerational home a place of constant activity. They had two younger twin sons had been dear friends of mine. The shy one and I learned how to read together, and the more athletic one was one of the most adventurous children amongst our group of friends, often straying far when playing in the wilderness. He was an adventurer, for certain, and beloved by all. I had fond memories of growing up with the twins, and nearly all my memories were positive.

Unbidden, a memory as persistant as a deep bruise sank to my surface thoughts. I was only about ten, and unable to let this childhood regret go, especially now.

One summer, all the neighborhood children had been playing hide and seek, and we could not find the adventurous twin. His panicked cries betrayed his wherabouts. The group of us discovered him stuck in the mud up to his knees as he wailed for help. While the swamp had areas of quicksand, they were (usually) well indicated, and closer to where the waters of the bay met the land. The area he had become stuck in was far too close to be dangerous to anyone, and was also well trafficked and marked. It was an obvious safe area, but he believed that he was sinking to his doom. The others and I laughed at him instead of helping him, and the boy had even begun to cry in impotent humiliation. Eventually, one of the older children took pity on him and pulled him out.

Through the rest of the warm evening, everyone continued laughing at him. He had been scared. That was foolish of me, I thought in retrospect. Many years later, the memory had stuck in my mind like a shard of glass. I now miss every bit of my old life with painful, bittersweet regret. Even the bad memories were memories of a world ruled with order and natural law.

I tasted a tear on my tongue which soon turned to ash. Emotions often had tastes and smells now. This was the unreality of my reality. It was best to accept it.

There was a sound in the air. A large black bird flew overhead, its raucous caws like the mocking laughter of the children in my memory. I saw a large blue bird flying close behind, and they both soared screaming into the low puffy white clouds against the yellow sky. The sun was momentarily hidden by a cloud. I continued walking; I continued remembering. Memories of the past from before everything happened were comforting, even if they were uncomfortable; they helped me keep my feet on the ground when my mind threatened to float away. Stability was important to keep yourself sane, I reminded myself.

The night following his humiliation, the adventurous brother had snuck outside past bedtime, picked up a heavy shell (their family had traded in clams from the bay) and struck his twin on the face as he slept. The next day, both boys had been beaten by their gentle giant of a father, who was apparently not as gentle as we had been led to believe. When they were done being grounded for a few weeks, I asked the twin who had been struck by the shell what had happened. He quietly answered, "If I hadn't made fun of him and we had helped him, no one would have gotten hurt." This incident was never spoken of again, and their father became a gentle bearded lamb once more. The adventurous twin eventually married a young girl he had impregnated in another settlement, and moved away. The other one stayed in our town as he came of age, and we continued our education together. My parents loved seeing me read, and as we grew older, they paid for both of us (his parents didn't believe in such frivolities) to regularly visit the next village over to further our education. An old scholar in a stone tower tutored us in exchange for keeping him fat with salted seafood, which he craved in his old age.

I hope wherever they are, my parents, they're still proud. If my mother could see just how brave I had become, she wouldn't have said those awful things to me back then. I miss my mother. Sometimes.

We were both friends for a long time, the shy twin and I. When he had been hit by the shell, the injury left a distinct crescent shaped mark over his right eye. He gave me a matching scar when we got into our own fight when the world was changing. A strike on my own right eye when I had questioned his judgement, and a desperate accusation from him that I was "starting fights!" I told myself he wasn't in his right mind that night; many people weren't, anyway. I miss him a lot. I hope that wherever he had gone, that he had gone to a place of happiness. I hoped beyond hope that I perhaps I had been wrong, that he had indeed found God in the impossible Silver Tower in the shining city beyond the bay. In this terrifying new world, anything was possible, despite improbability.

Approximately two thirds of the second cottage was in darkness as if under a moonless night. I never knew what had happened to the young couple that lived there. The night the Glass Forest grew was the night their door shut forever, and they both disappeared. Part of their house resembled a flat, dead shadow. It was as if time now refused to touch that particular area, leaving it locked within a deathless sleep of unnatural night. Whenever I walked too close to their front door, I felt like vomiting. That was a shame. They were nice. They did, however, have a shed with provisions that I was able to enter. These kept me fed for awhile. They had a lamb stored there, perfectly butchered and ready for roasting. I ate well that night.

A flock of blue birds fluttered above, swimming out of the clouds. The black bird had flown away somewhere, but now, the blue birds were harrying something else, chasing it, dipping and diving in the golden sky like darting fish in a bay of sunshine. They chittered and chirped as they flew as if speaking to one another. I walked ahead with purpose, the hard soles of my shoes making a "clip" sound on the cobbled road, passing the empty home of my beloved lost neighbors as a hint of a tear struggled to emerge from my right eye.

There was a gust of wind as I passed a third cottage, the last of which that I had looted. A metal door was mysteriously bent outward from the inside, and a gouge resembling a wicked splinter raked across its surface. The door hadn't been damaged last time I had come this way. It creaked eerily against the gusty wind. Who knew how that had happened? I tried not to think on it. This dilapidated shack with the rusty, half-caved in roof had belonged to an old man who had drank himself to death not too long ago. He had been, to my surprise, apparently one of the last remaining souls of our settlement. I had discovered his demise when I had first begun scavenging, thinking everyone was now long gone. When I had entered his home for the first time, I was filled with sadness that his corpse was actually still warm; a smile was frozen on his face forever, and his blue eyes focused on a crudely painted portrait of an unknown young woman as he lay slumped over a desk. This overlooked old man had a history that would now never be told, I reflected sadly before I rifled through his personal belongings. I remember feeling great sadness at his discovery. The neighbors had always seemed to ignore him, and his name wasn't often heard during conversation. Sometimes, this lonely soul would take a bottle down to the marsh, and push a small rowboat out into the bay. There, alone with himself, his wine, and the laughter of the sea birds, he would drink. His stationary bobbing boat was a common sight to those of us on land, so we just ignored him. We never saw him do anything else but drink alone in his boat.

Regrettably, his alcoholism meant his alcohol supply was mostly gone, and when I had first cautiously opened his door, the stink of sour death was heavy in the air. His spartan belongings had consisted of threadbare clothes, a few books on offworld history, an uncomfortable bed, and a desk covered in letters which depicted what appeared to be poems in an unknown language written in an elegant hand. Whatever those letters said now would likely remain a mystery, I thought with a heavy heart. I wished I had spoken to this man while he had still lived. So many stories left untold, and so many songs left unsung.

A ten minute walk separated this group of homes with the greater settlement, with trees in various states of change and sentience along the way. I carried on. I was able to cry a little, and that was nice. Crying reminded me that I was still alive and human. The sky began to shift toward a cool pale green.

I heard her again; she was calling me.

The blue birds were now squalling above, and dropped a heavy dark object as I traveled down the road, now about a hundred meters from my home. It landed with a hard clatter, bouncing twice. I paused, and looked down. It appeared to be a doll of a man in a heavy suit of armor, like a knight in the old stories, but different. His armor had writings and symbols on it that I did not recognize. There were gaps in its bulky joints where a red fluid leaked like oil.

I picked it up. It was warm.

It squirmed in my hand. With a fright I threw it into the air. With joyous squawks, a group of blue birds doved down to catch it, snatching the little armored doll and taking it into the air again. I could almost hear a tiny scream. Or, maybe it was just a playful bird? Who knows anymore. As long as the landscape left me alone, I was content. I continued onward.

A curious sniff of my fingers, and this time, the mysterious red fluid was blood. I tried not to think about it. I walked further.


	5. Pareidolia

I had a bit of time to ruminate as I walked down the path. The pinkish tint of the outer whorls of the Anomaly had just begun to lick at the horizon as my afternoon continued. The birds that had been harrying the armored doll had vanished behind a low lying cloud, and everything was relatively quiet. That could change at any moment, of course. The only constant here was that things were never constant, and this extended to nearly everything I saw or interacted with.

The conifers and other various trees had begun to grow tall around me on either side of the path, the susurrus of their foliage like the hissing of an angry serpent. A willowy tree with branches of sinuous ebony quickly grew before my eyes on the left side of the path; it slowly began to seep a dark red fluid as it rapidly matured. I observed as I walked near as crescent shaped leaves that resembled large translucent sapphires unfurled in the sunlight, their serrated edges glimmering like the edge of a saw. An eye opened on a leaf as I paid the tree no mind, and it closed, letting me pass unmolested.

It wasn't just the landscape that was different, I was reminded daily; time was different here. Early on, I noticed that the sun would move slower or faster across the sky than normal. Some days lasted what felt like forever, especially when I wasn't doing well. There were days that clipped by as fast as a spooked horse when I was especially busy with my gardening. The color of the sky and the sun would also change. There were days where I had small hope that everything was normal again when the sun was yellow and the sky was blue. That normality was always dashed when, as if laughing at me, it would shift, just as it had done a short time ago when I passed the cottage of the old drunk. The sky was presently light green, and a pinkish white sun now cast cruel shadows in the afternoon light, like a bright unyielding eye. The only constant was the red pulse of the Hadex Anomaly above, but that only came out at night (most of the time).

The Hadex Anomaly, as I knew it, was a new thing in the sky. That is, I conceived it to be a "new" thing. The very definition of time was beginning to fray now that I had lived so long in this parody of existence. The very name itself had come from an outsider who had visited us some time ago. Offworlders must have also seen the red wound from inside their silvery ships that skimmed the sky. How stunning the sight must have been, to witness such a thing from the air!

One of the smaller sky-ships had fallen one day to land in the barren hills to the west. There wasn't much there, but eventually, rumors of foreign strangers in various states of sanity began to sift through our population, and the population of the neighboring villages.

When our offworld visitor came, he was a wild thin man with dirty hair missing an arm bleeding through his strange apparel. His clothes were foreign to us, easily marking him as an offworlder. He was adorned with strange symbols, writings, seals, and weaponry. Our settlement, fortunately for him, was open toward outsiders, treating the greater world as a mysterious storybook adventure. Unusual against the backdrop of the typical unfamiliar distrust that was normal in our general region, many of us relished adventurous visitors passing through our the land. We often enjoyed the odd traveler hiking through our wilderness along the rim of the bay on the way to the city as they would offer us free news of the greater world around us.

Oh how little we knew. Once bitten, the fruit remains spoiled.

When the traveler came to us, he was nearly incoherent. He was bloody and raving. Collapsing at the outskirts of our village, he was brought readily to our doctor who patched his missing left forearm and stitched his wounds. He looked to have been through Hell, complete with burn marks and the stare of one who has seen too much. Many of us were alarmed, but we helped him despite our wariness. When he awoke, he began telling stories of the changed world in a stilted tongue before dissolving into madness. His understanding of our language was weak, but once night fell and he started ceaselessly babbling again, we understood that the new red bruise in the sky had a name.

"The Hadex Anomaly, the Hadex! Emperor save us!" He had cried, pointing at the window. I had heard that he had cried these words and nothing else for hours straight as night fell. It was alarming, to say the least. No one had thought to name the strange red star yet, so the name became so. It was an anomaly, so it made sense. What "Hadex" meant was a mystery, and that information had died with the stranger later. We could never really get a cohesive story out of him.

My relative education and literacy meant that I was called upon to visit the man; perhaps I would be able to understand him and the strange words he said? My best friend, while similarly knowledgeable, was not available, and had taken to talking to people that weren't there as he stared at the Glass Forest. I had walked to him and begged him to come with me, and all he could do was smile at me, beatific and unblinking in response. He had been at this for some time.

The home of our neighborhood doctor was a white, stuccoed dwelling with numerous clam shells serving as shingles on the roof that would whistle in the frequent, gusty wind. It was one of the nicest buildings in our settlement, and growing up, I visited the kind woman doctor to treat the odd cold or get an wound stitched. The evening I had been called in as a possible translator, I remembered the familiar whistling whine of the shells on the roof in the wind were silent, despite the wind. Or, perhaps the familiar whistle had simply been drowned out by the ravings of the madman gibbering in the doctor's living room?

He had calmed down slightly as I approached the shell cottage; to the relief of everyone present, the man was now once again streaming odd sentences together. I caught snippets of his ravings as I walked closer to the doctor's cottage. "...Hadex...Hadex Anomaly...on the grasp...they're all dead again...we're all dead...all dead...again...on the grasp...just like the grasp...all dead again..." he said the same words over and over again. I recognized a formal language often spoken by offworlders, and to my trained ears, easily understood. I remember that I had even looked forward to practicing my language skills as I walked into the spacious cottage.

This interest quickly fell away as soon as the man saw me. I will never forget his bleeding eyes as they locked on to mine as he removed a small pistol from his clothing, and swiftly shot himself in the head while looking straight at me. A shower of bright red gore decorated the white walls as he fell forward, and his mutterings were silenced forever.

I don't remember much else from that evening. I woke up in my bed the next day to the news that he had "passed on". Did they think I would not remember the outsider, or the color of his red and grey brains against the wall? The day after the man had shot himself I drank myself to sleep in the late afternoon. I was much better afterward. Life experience through brutal adaptation is an expeditious teacher, and I was determined not to the let the changed world get the best of me, despite what my mother had said.

Half drunk that day, I had also discovered that my best friend had not moved from his vigil outside the Glass Forest. He remained staring into nothing, his eyes wide with eternity. He wasn't interested in sleep or food anymore, it had seemed. I had been told that all he had done was smile at the strange forest during the my visit with the offworlder. He didn't respond when I tried to talk to him, so I left him alone. I placed a small parcel of fish and bread at his feet. I really shouldn't have left him alone out there. If I had stayed beside him, would he have stayed in the village and listened to us instead of the voices? Would his family still be alive? These are thoughts that hurt me worse than anything this world has thrown at me.

I walked. I realized I had begun crying again. The sky gradually became interrupted by a view of taller trees which bent to unknown winds, and also spoke in unknown tongues. The blue birds reappeared once again, tossing and catching the armored doll above me until another passing cloud consumed them. A few drops of blood remained on the road, red and wet. The hiss in the unnatural foliage above was my company now.

The trees further along the cobblestone path were larger, and in various states of alteration. Some were relatively unchanged, green, and healthy. Other ones were different, with growths resembling eyes and sharp teeth causing terrible pareidolia. They shrouded my way, either side arcing over my head to knit in places like gnarled fingers, their shadows as dappled as fish scales. I could hear whispers here to a louder degree. A tree reached out in the wind with a prehensile branch, one razor sharp branch resembling crab claws. It sheared a lock of loose hair that wasn't tied back clean off my head. The length of hair was snatched up by the greedy branch and taken away. I kept walking, my fright swallowed heavily in my throat. I stopped crying. Sometimes, things could smell sorrow here.

The doctor's house was just down the road. Past that, the communal meeting hall. There was plenty of wine and food stored there, and I needed to stock up.

"You stupid, ungrateful insect. And after all we've _done _for you. You _left _us," a familiar voice said behind me. I did not turn around, and kept walking. She was the worst of all.


	6. Strangers

I had been clenching my fists too hard again; I had been thinking too hard about the past and not paying attention when it happened. And that causes things to happen. I had let myself become distracted while walking away from her. It was almost as if she could hear me thinking somehow, and had prowled behind me as I had been chewing on the dried remains of my sanity.

Wait, no, take a deep breath.

She couldn't actually be there, I reminded myself. I had left her in the Glass Forest. She was gone. That wasn't her. Her memory was a terrible shadow made material out of whatever blasphemy had worked its will here on this world, and whatever I heard was not her. I walked faster.

I yelped in surprise as my foot caught a small rolling gemstone on the path, and I stumbled. Where had that come from? My right arm reached out to stop the road from striking my face, and I felt an electric jolt as my elbow connected with stone.

When I wasn't immediately killed by what I had heard following me, I pulled myself up and swore. Thinking and worrying too much about things I could not change had left me hypersensitive to my surroundings. My clumsiness and my paranoid nature were the only beasts feasting on me this afternoon. The voice was simply the chatter of the noisy trees, which was ever present along this road. She simply couldn't be here.

Or so I thought.

"I _love _you," she cooed a short distance away in a voice of velvet acid. I froze. There was a slithering sound, and vague chittering. No, that wasn't the trees. The voice had come from behind me on the road. It must be something pretending to be her. The voice was cold, dead, and utterly alive, all at the same time. It was strangely appealing on my ears, almost seductive. It sounded like thousands of reeds singing in the wind, trying to call me into a pit of quicksand. The voice was hungry for me, I could tell. "Come back to us," it whispered in request.

I remained seated on the road, shivering as I contemplated my next move. I dared not look behind. My frantic eyes scanned the landscape. The next house was visible, just fifty paces or so away on my right. It was the doctor's house. It was close; I could probably get to it in time. It was incredible how calm one can remain in some difficult situations, I had observed recently.

And then, she was then right behind me. I could feel the hot moist wind of her breathing across my entire body; it even cut through my clothes. The sky began to turn grey. As my heart rate increased, black undulating clouds unfurled in the sky like wounds, and the unnatural trees around me rapidly began to wither into ash, their powdery remains spilling messily across the road. When my eyes caught it, one multicolored tree shattered into a million gemstones, each polished jewel rolling across the road like marbles, each like the stone I had slipped upon earlier. I took a breath, desperately trying to formulate an escape.

My elbow felt warm and wet. It was then that I noticed that I was bleeding. Oh no.

"You're bleeding," she also noticed. The warm wind at my back made a musing sound. Still terribly close behind me, I heard a sound that resembled a fish being messily gutted, along with a guttural purr. "Let me _see _it. Let mummy _help _you..."

No. Not today.

Acting upon instinct with great adrenaline, I bolted for the door of the nearby shelled cottage. The sky turned bright red in my panic as I raced. Behind me, the scrabbling of what could be claws on stone, or many boots striking a hard surface. A moist growl, and a spray of moisture struck the back of my neck. She was right behind me.

"Let mummy _fix _you..." the voice said directly into my ear, almost like a pleading lover; it almost sounded just like her.

I ran. I dared not look behind as I raced to the metal door. With frantic arms, I pushed the door open, and leapt inside. Closing my eyes, I slammed the door behind me, and I heard a loud impact. The door bent inward. I held it shut with my body, my arms pinned to the door frame. A nail broke loose as I felt another impact. The thing that was outside made a disappointed sound.

"Don't you _love _me?" It said. "Don't you _trust _me? Don't you _miss _me?"

I miss my mother. Sometimes.

For moments or hours, I stood there, breathing heavily. The entire cabin shook as something struck the outer walls. I heard shells fracture on the roof. In fear, I kept my eyes closed, and so I was not able to see that I had company inside the small living room. Was this finally the end?

"Alright, that's enough. You get right back out there," I heard a click and something metal was against my forehead. Oh no. That couldn't be real either, since no one was alive here anymore in the proper sense. I kept my eyes closed in desperate disbelief that Hell was inside with me now.

"Last warning, friend," his heavily accented offworld language barked at me as I felt the metal push into my head. An offworlder? But how? I dared to open my eyes, still bracing myself against the door. Another impact, and a shard of metal cut into my back.

A pale, clean shaven man in foreign clothes and blue green eyes was looking at me; he had a metal pistol pointed flush with my forehead. He looked at me, his expression as cold as mountain winter. He looked vaguely familiar, but I could not place him.

"What are you doing in my house?" He demanded, pulling his lips into a snarl, still holding the weapon against me. I could feel through the gun that he was trembling, and his eyes betrayed his own terror. His house? But this was the doctor's house.

"Um..." I swallowed heavily. Petrified, I could do nothing. Behind me, outside, frustrated growling. The unnatural noises turned into words again.

"Come out, sweetling. Your mummy misses you!" The sound of something sharp stroking the metal of the door. I looked to the strange offworlder, my eyes pleading in silent hope that he was real, and that he would not kill me. I felt bile rising in my throat.

The strange man looked at me, and began to quickly study me. Still holding his pistol, his other arm began patting different parts of me, perhaps searching for weapons, or perhaps, like me, also seeing if I was real. I felt a sharp pain where his hand briefly pinched an area of bare flesh near my right arm; I must have been injured when I stumbled earlier. My heart beat heavily. There was a brief moment of angry conflict across his face.

He took the gun away from my forehead.

"Try anything and you're dead," he said simply, reaching for something inside the breast pocket of his woolen coat. It was an Inquisitorial rosette made of solid metal. He gripped it tightly in a black gloved hand. I had never actually seen a metal rosette. I hoped that this man was real, and not like whatever was outside.

We both looked at one another, very suspicious. There was a light, almost gentle tapping against the door behind me.

"Come home to sweet mummy!" The voice outside requested once again. The metal now felt hot, parts of it nearly painfully so, but I dared not move.

His eyes searching quickly, he holstered his pistol, and clutched the rosette in his right hand. His other hand raised two fingers to his temple. His gaze became fixed over my shoulder, as if boring through the door through its intensity.

"Stand aside, close your eyes," he curtly demanded. I found myself easily obeying. I nearly collapsed to the side. I vomited all over the floor and began to shake.

The door burst open, and she was there. I had my eyes closed as I continued to be sick, not willing to see what form she had taken this time. I heard shouts and what sounded like strange prayers along with the musical reedy growling. A flash of light illuminated the space behind my eyes. There was a strange pressure, a scream like a dying hare, and my ears rang. I laid on the floor, and continued vomiting the remains of my stew from earlier.

Blessed silence fell but for the ragged breathing of the offworlder.

"Alright, whoever you are..." a click, and I opened my eyes to find myself facing a pistol again. There were smoldering burn marks up his coat that had not been there before; it appeared to have been torn. He was breathing heavily as if under heavy exertion, nostrils flaring.

I warily pulled myself into a sitting position again. It seemed whatever monster had been hunting me had fled. What had the strange man done?

"I'll ask you again, what are you doing in my house?"

I felt like I had to answer. Clearing my throat, I began in his language. "It... it was safe. I mean no harm. I thought this was the doctor's house and-" I vomited again, shaking violently.

"This is my house, and you're an intruder. Who are you?" I could not answer. I felt cold sweat covering my body under my clothes.

"Speak!"

"My name is..." What was my name? Had I forgotten it in the scuffle?

"I...I don't remember... please don't hurt me!"

"Why should I trust you? If you're lying, I'll know, silver-haired wanderer! Don't you play dumb! I can drag that information out of you as easy as marrow through a bone!" He barked at me, still holding the pistol in one hand, and the rosette in the other. I could see that he was beginning to shake. Reluctance was now seeping into his body language. The whites of his blue green eyes had become more visible, and his pupils had dilated. Was he afraid of me?

"I'm not afraid of you!" He answered my concern as quickly as I had it. He knelt down to where I lay, his pistol again pushed against my forehead. It was warm. I could feel him breathing heavily on me. "Who sent you?" He demanded.

"N-no one," I replied. "I'm just... trying to live. I'm sorry," tears were now streaming down my face. A nosebleed had erupted, and it was now dripping into the mess I had made on the floor. I weakly straightened, head bowed.

The barrel of his pistol was now placed under my chin, and I was made to look at my questioner. When I caught his eyes this time, it felt as if someone had drawn a sharp piece of stone across my mind. It was painful and disconcerting. He looked at me deeply, his eyes lashing to and fro as if somehow searching for a hidden secret within me.

"Please, I mean no harm, offworlder. Truly! Are you real?" I cried, tasting the blood that was now flowing from my nose. I couldn't lie if I tried.

His lips slightly parted, and for a heartbeat, the briefest expression of pity was visible on his hard, pale features. "You truly don't know, do you?" He asked me, still searching. His lips drew into an expression of contempt flavored with defeat. "Ignorance is bliss, I suppose." Keeping his eyes on me, he holstered his weapon, and sat down on the cold stone floor with me, legs crossed. He tapped his finger against the metal of the rosette. What was he thinking? I studied him. Where did this man come from? I now noticed that his foreign clothes were of fine quality, but also, off season. They were of dark furs and woolens, more suited to the snow than summertime. There was something achingly familiar about this man, but I could not place it.

As I watched him, I saw that strange look of conflict once again. He exhaled. Suddenly, I became aware that I was very tired. I slumped. Almost tenderly, he reached out to cradle my head away from the pool of vomit as I began to feel my consciousness grey out. "I'm sorry about this, but I don't know if I can trust you," he said, the ice in his voice replaced with tenuous regret. It was then that I finally noticed the empty syringe on the floor. I didn't even fight as I began to pass out, my world becoming replaced by blessed oblivion once more.


	7. Angels

"You can never catch me! You're always too slow!" I shouted, throwing an oblong shell at him. It bounced off his thick head of dark hair with a humorous spin, landing in the mud. Galan flinched, chewing the remains of a boiled crab, broadly smiling. He placed a hollow crab claw in a waste bucket, and stood up from his seat on the tree stump. I had already finished my dinner, and he was simply taking too long. We only had so much light left in the day left, and I wasn't going to spend it watching him slowly eat. I stood at the threshold of the tall grass, running my hands through the whispering fronds. He gave me a nasty look. A little teasing between friends never hurt anyone, right?

"You're too fat with crab to catch me!" I finally yelled at him, picking up another clam shell and tossing it in his direction. This one didn't quite reach, but it was enough to finally get Galan's attention away from his food. Some of the other villagers nearby were just finishing their feast, and were seated around a communal outdoor table drinking wine under a large conifer. All wore smiles as they gossiped, drank, and reveled in the playful midsummer atmosphere. Small children ran about, also playing tag. It was a perfect evening.

"I'll get you!" He said, laughing, and dipped his hand into a bucket filled with discarded crab claws. Before he could throw it, I turned and ran into the grass. I reminded myself that if I came home filthy, my family would not be pleased. I still slept under their roof, after all. Even though I was now of age (as of today), I still lived with my mother and father. They would have it no other way, and I needed to help with the fishing and crabbing during the busy season. We used to have a fourth, my brother Leurc, but he had abandoned us last year. My father wanted me to stay for now to help with business. There was all the time in the world for adventures later. Perhaps another year I would go and visit the city beyond the bay?

The innocent danger of getting muddy made the game just a bit more exciting. I ran into the tall grass, my boots sinking just a bit in the muck. It hadn't rained much in awhile, and the tide was out, so this particular little area of the marsh was drier than typical. I had many places to hide from best friends wielding dirty crab shells. The long marsh grasses tickled my cheeks as I ran through them, briefly stopping to consider which well trod path I would use to flee from my friend. Behind, I could hear him ambling, crunching through the landscape as I raced forward, as fast as a hare.

The midsummer evening was warm. Glow bugs had begun to emerge in the twilight, and sprinkled the marsh with tiny golden lanterns of childhood nostalgia. I used to catch them in jars when I was little, but I was getting too old for most childhood games, I had decided. Sometimes the summer wind would call back to lighter times, however, and the joy of being alive was too good to suppress. A simple game of hide and seek in the grass after a few cups of wine was a simple, frivolous pleasure.

Behind me, I could still hear Galan, barging through the landscape with all the grace of a drunken bull. He and his twin were very different. His brother Randre was very much into sporting games, pranks, and climbing the few tall trees we had in our village. He hadn't been around recently, and it was rumored now that he had found a girl in the next settlement over, and was spending all his time over there instead of with his family. At least my friend was still here.

Still laughing, I burst through a wall of grass, and found myself surprised.

There, in the mud, was a little boy. He had his back to me, and he was sunken up to his knees. He was crying for help. How had I not heard him? The scene was chillingly familiar. I touched my right eyebrow as a shade of a memory came to me. It was sore, as if I had just been struck. The little boy continued to cry for help, reaching down to his knees to pull at his hopelessly stuck legs. I remembered how this had gone before, and how it would always go.

"Hello?" I asked, walking into the small clearing in the grass.

And then, I was somewhere new.

Instead of the reedy salt swamp, I was now in a blasted smoky wasteland of snow, rocks, and death. I could smell blood in the air. I could not determine if it was dusk or dawn, as the atmosphere was a choking grey shadow of ash. Distant sounds of what I assumed was artillery blossomed far away from me like thunder. There was now a different boy before me; he was in his teenage years, blonde haired and blue eyed. He lay frantic, his eyes in great pain, his lower half trapped under a twisted hunk of smoldering metal. There was no one else around us. We appeared to be in a remote part of an active war zone. The sounds of battle surrounded us, but we were alone presently.

A sky ship screamed above us, obscured by the smoke. Death screams and an explosion nearby, someplace sight unseen. Despite the noise, I couldn't look away from the stranger if I wanted.

He finally saw me. His eyes fixed on mine, alight with agony. "Help...me..." he croaked out. He said it in another language. That was odd.

While I was confused, my parents had always taught me to remember to help others, and to always be brave. Bravery to help the downtrodden was a virtue. Disregarding the changed world around me, I stepped in the freezing sucking mud, and walked to the stranger. My boots sunk up to my knee. The mud here did not smell of salt and life, but of sulfur and death.

I observed the stranger as I approached him. He was approximately 15 years of age, and was outfitted with finery befitting an officer despite his youth. Gold insignias and strange decorative adornments caught the dim light on his collar. A rifle of offworld craftsmanship lay broken into pieces nearby on a patch of drier land. This youth was a soldier? His eyes watched me as I approached him. "Help me," he said again in a choked whine. I saw him feebly struggle. The large hunk of shredded metal was pinning him to the ground. I felt heat radiate from it. He was stuck fast here, perhaps forgotten by his comrades on this remote patch of battleground.

"Please..." he wheezed, lips parted. "I don't want to die! I'm just trying to live!" His nose began to bleed a faint river of red down his hairless chin. This youth was very young to be a soldier. Something was wrong here, but I tried not to think about it. My curiosity drove me onward.

I stopped, and stood over him in the mud. Was he dangerous? The youth was pinned; his legs were trapped beneath him with his upper body was exposed above the muck. I concluded that he would die there if he was not helped, if not through an injury, but through exposure to the elements. I began to dig with my bare hands. Whoever this was didn't deserve to die in this wretched way, and if I could help, then I would. It seemed the boy was drifting into shock, and was too weak to extricate himself. After about fifteen minutes of digging, the metal was loosened, and I was able to pry the offending scrap off of his lower body. It didn't weigh much at all. Without a word from either of us, I hauled him up. I wasn't very strong, but he wasn't very tall, so it was doable. Huffing, I dragged him to a drier patch of land, and laid him down against the ruined remains of a burnt tree.

He watched me as I pulled him into a sitting position. His eyes were unblinking, and half delirious. As I stood, breathing heavily and trying to catch my breath, I noticed that his nosebleed had worsened. Remembering that he may be injured, I quickly checked to see if he was bleeding anywhere else with my messy hands, and found him to be remarkably unscathed. He was very lucky.

He gazed at me as I touched him. There was an explosion nearby, but neither one of us flinched.

"Are you an angel?" He whispered to me in a guttural offworld language, his voice filled with wonder. Inexplicably, the youth began to cry. A trembling gloved hand cautiously reached out to touch me. I shied away, and did not respond. I wasn't sure of this. This could not be real. The world was going away again. Tendrils of oblivion called back for me. I did not belong here, no.

No, not real. Another explosion. The battle seemed to be encroaching upon our position. I heard screams again, and the sound of another sky ship overhead.

"Please don't leave me!" he cried out. The youth desperately reached for me as my world fell away into darkness. The last thing I saw were his blue green eyes, their expression betraying a terrible revelation.


	8. Introductions

The darkness relented, and I was in a new place now. It was very snowy. The night was cold, and I could feel the gentle sting of windy snowflakes on my exposed skin. Winter was all around me, cold and blustery. It didn't bother me too much. I was standing on a hard surface now, and not a muddy battlefield. The wind sounded like the song of the reeds in my ears. It was pleasant, comforting. I liked that sound.

There was another sound. A man was weeping. I turned to the noise, and found a small pocket of existence. I felt drawn to it.

Sitting next to a miserable campfire, there was a man holding a translucent green bottle. His eyes were down, fixed on the fire. I could see the shine of tears on his pale cheeks as the snow danced whirlwinds around him in the dark. His clothes were wool and sturdy, and well tailored for the cold around him, and displayed colorful metal insignias on his collar. They were the clothes of an offworld soldier, and they were familiar. On his head he wore a dark fur cap; a dusting of white snow was upon him, as if the man had not moved for some minutes, allowing it to accumulate. Ten paces away, in the shadows, I watched him, curious.

Another voice in the winter wind after the slam of what sounded like a heavy door nearby. Someone else was here.

"Listen Yevgeni, I know about this "angel" you claim to see all the time," a man said, just out of sight, his footsteps crunching on the new snow. The man did not react; he continued to stare at the fire, his head angled downward. I saw a gloved finger tap the bottle, and his body heaved with a sigh. A new person entered my field of vision. It was another man with a broad body and a heavy dark beard. He was clad in similar military finery, and his woolens bore many medallions and decorations. A decorated officer perhaps? He seemed to be even more high in status than the man next to the fire.

"May I sit?" The bearded new man asked his companion.

He did not answer, and shrugged. The new man did not wait for a response, and sat next to him.

"I'm not going to tell command directly what you told me earlier, and what I heard you talking about in your sleep, but things are getting a little out of hand. When you got angry at dinner, you burnt out all the lights in the galley. I had to make excuses. Something has to be done. This cannot continue."

The other man sighed again. I could see that he was chewing on his lower lip. He then brought his bottle up to his lips and drank heavily. He was obviously troubled.

"You can't stay here like this. Now, I know your father. I'm not going to tell him about tonight. He's a good man, a fine leader. I could probably get a few strings pulled to give you an easier time with traveling to Terra. You said you always wanted to visit, right?"

The seated man still did not respond. His companion reached out and clutched his shoulder in friendship, attempting, perhaps in vain, to calm the tense atmosphere.

"It has to be done. I'm sorry, my friend. All it takes is one curious Inquisitor, and they'll throw you on a Black Ship, despite who you are. And, they'll punish me for keeping it a secret. You don't want that, do you? The scandal that would go through your family back home, they would never recover!" The bearded man's tone was conciliatory and stern at the same time. He gripped the other man's shoulder. "All this talk of you seeing an angel, and that it saved you on your first deployment years ago. How it talks to you in your sleep. It is, well, suspicious to say the least. How do you know that it wasn't a daemon? You have to go to Terra. They'll check you out, and I'm sure everything will be alright."

A mumbled response, finally. "...not a damn daemon; I know what I saw." Another drink from the bottle.

The military finery both men wore was indeed very familiar. I had just seen it before I had been taken away to wherever I was now. It had been worn by the youth who had been trapped in the mud on the battlefield. He had also called me an angel. I stepped cautiously forward. I tried to remain inconspicuous, my footfalls gentle on the snow. I was very curious. There was something familiar here.

The seated man looked up in my direction. His blue green eyes searched the area, lashing to and fro. With a start, I had realized that they were the same eyes I had seen on the youth! This man was older though, perhaps in his mid 20s. I searched his face as he scanned the area. There was a sudden desperate expression on his face as his distinctive eyes caught mine. Both he and I simultaneously stifled a gasp. I had been caught.

"What are you looking at?" The other man turned in my direction. And, much to my dismay, he saw me as well.

The bearded man immediately stood up, kicking dirt and snow roughly aside, and drew a pistol. He aimed it at my head. I froze, terrified. For some heartbeats the only sound was the singing of the snowy winter wind in my ears.

"That's close enough, friend," he growled, cocking the weapon. "Identify yourself."

I couldn't move or speak. Why was I here? Was this real? Was this all a maddening illusion? Was I dying back on the road, killed by the thing that cloaked itself in my mother's memory? I closed my eyes, and tried to assure myself that this was an illusion. Unfortunately, the danger seemed very real when everything persisted.

I could hear that he was walking forward, his steps heavy and angry. A branch snapped under him. I opened my eyes, and saw the bearded offworld officer standing a single stride away from me, his lips in an angry snarl. He had a hand on his weapon, pointed at my head. In his other hand was a metal Inquisitorial rosette, similar to the one I had seen wielded by the stranger in the doctor's house. Over his shoulder, I saw the other man drop his bottle, and stand, his face heavy with disbelief.

"Alright, I don't know how you got past all the checkpoints, but you're going to start talking. Yevgeni, come here, let's make our little spy comfortable," he said, calling to the man behind him. This man's eyes were dark, and beheld hidden cruelty. The smallest hint of a smirk pulled at his lips.

His eyes raked up and down my body. He licked his lips.

Behind him, I saw the other man blink a few times in quick succession. His expression became as hard as a sapphire. The fire suddenly burned a flash of luminous cobalt as he drew his own pistol with near preternatural quickness.

It all happened so fast. This time, I didn't look away as the man threatening me fell, his head a mess of gore. He fell on the snow at my feet, blood pooling like spilled wine. Heat radiated from him as he shuddered and died.

The man remained holding his pistol, still and wide eyed; he was now breathing heavily. Pain was etched across his features. A wisp of smoke danced from the barrel of his weapon. All I could do was watch him.

He began to silently cry as he lowered his weapon. The sound of a bell, possibly an alarm, began to ring nearby. He walked to me, unblinking. He dropped his weapon to the snow as if it was an afterthought. He approached.

"You're real," he said breathlessly. "You have not aged. How is this possible?" The man named Yevgeni walked close to me, and tentatively reached with his other hand. He ignored the corpse of the officer at his feet; all of his attention was on me.

"Don't be frightened of me." Another bell sounded. I heard distant shouting. Were there people coming? Had that shot been heard? He addressed my unspoken worry by looking in the direction of the alarm, his expression frantic. He trained his attention on me once more, his eyes serious.

"What is your name?"

I didn't answer.

"Where did you come from? What is your name? Where can I find you?" He asked quickly as I began to fade away once again. I felt like I was being shaken, even though no hands were touching me. I was scared, and I didn't want to be here. I felt like I had to answer him, though.

"Coranin," I was able to get the word out, but the last part of the word had faded into an echo as I began to depart.

"Cora? Your name is Cora?" He asked quickly. Was my name Cora? I think it was. I wasn't sure, though. I heard another bell chime, this one was nearby. Hounds began to bark in protest of the noise.

"My name is Yevgeni," the man formally introduced himself. "You saved me..." He reached out again, but to his horror, his hand went through my form. "No, please don't go! Don't leave me here!"

I was fading away.

"No matter where you go, I will find you again!" He looked again into my eyes, and reached out to my face. His fingers slipped past my cheek as if it was smoke.

"I promise you, Cora. My angel!" The words sang like reeds on the wind as I found myself being pulled downwards. I felt once again as if I was being shaken, as if someone was violently jostling me.

With a great intake of breath, I found myself on a small bed covered in sweat. My heart was beating heavily, and the world was spinning. There were hands shaking me, one on each arm. I looked up, and found a familiar face filled with worry. He let go of me, and mumbled a muted thanks to a higher power. He continued watching me, his eyes filled with both disbelief and awe.

While he had gotten older with each vision I had beheld, his eyes had always remained the same. From the terror of the battlefield, to the hard resolution he had displayed when murdering the bearded officer, his distinctive blue green eyes had remained the same. Eyes were mirrors of the soul that dwelled within the flesh, I had always been told by my mother.

"Cora?" He finally asked in a strangled, disbelieving whisper. "Is...is...your name Cora?"

I silently nodded. I think that was my name. Maybe.

"I found you," Yevgeni said.


	9. Discoveries

I was cold again when I awoke. I was covered in a damp sweat. Yevgeni stood watching above me, clenching his jaw and fists nervously. He blotted a towel on my forehead and cheeks. It felt like I had been thrown into cold water, and swiftly removed. I watched him as he fussed over me. There was another empty syringe on a wooden table next to me.

There was something wrong about the atmosphere in this room. I could not place it. The air felt unusually dry and cold, unlike a summer evening, and more like a winter morning after snowfall. I feebly attempted to sit up, but Yevgeni shook his head and gently coaxed me back down, shushing me with his hands on my shoulders.

"The antidote will pull you out, but you have to rest for now. If you get up too soon, you'll be sick."

"You poisoned me," I weakly spat at him. He paused, and removed his hands. He sighed heavily, eyes closed, pain carved across his features.

"Yes. Yes, I did."

"Why?"

"I-I didn't know if I could trust you. I've been pursued in the past. They've used your body as an illusion to trap me before."

"I don't understand," I said, truly not comprehending what the familiar man was talking about. Was he a persistent illusion? Was I being deceived by the world around me?

"No, I'm real." Once again he answered my thoughts as I had them. Was he reading my mind? I was greatly alarmed and tried to move again, and once again, failing.

He looked at me with concern, patting me on the forehead with a damp rag once again. "Cora, do you not remember now? I'm... I'm what the greater Imperium calls a psyker. They're hunting me, the Inquisition. I've seen you before, many times. We've met before."

I had heard that term "psyker" before. The wise old woman in the cottage that had walked away on taloned legs had been one, the scholar in the old tower had revealed to me once. She was one of the very first victims of the changed world in our village. Would this man be next? Were we not safe in this place?

Yevgeni sat down next to me, studying me intensely. I heard a joint crack as he settled in a hardwood chair. Flustered and fidgeting, he smoothed out the wrinkles in his trousers. Unlike my previous visions, I noted that there were no more metal insignias or decorations on his dark coat. His collar was bare and unadorned. The man was also at least a decade older than when I had seen him in my vision. His eyes remained the same, as cold as the air around me.

Why was it so cold, I wondered.

"Do you know where you are?" He asked me, pulling a blanket of animal skin over my chilled body. "You ran in here right after I-" He stopped. "You ran in here while something terrible chased you. What did it look like outside? You said this was the "doctor's house" but it is not. This has been my home for nine months now."

Nine months? The world hadn't even been ruined that long. Likely an illusion once again. I took a deep breath. The passage of time was different here now, but it was never so dramatically altered.

"Um, well," I felt compelled to answer as he fixed his eyes on mine while standing above me. "It is summertime, but different, as everything is changed now, of course. The land is warm. The marsh is gone. The Glass Forest is still there. My village is gone. I was walking down the road to find more provisions at the longhouse. There was a creature using my mother's voice chasing me, and I ran in here."

His face dropped, but he quickly recovered. He cleared his throat nervously as he slowly stood, and walked toward another table at the far end of the small room. As he walked, his back turned to me, I took the time to notice that the wood that made this place was entirely foreign. The timbers that made the supports for our cottages were of pale wood with a spicy smell, and our walls were made of clay, shells, and stone as wood wasn't the most common resource in our general area. This entire dwelling was dark hardwood with a sturdy ceiling, exposed beams supporting an odd angled roof. The air smelled of cinders and of an unfamiliar, yet appealing deep earthiness, like grass after a rain. I had never seen (or smelled) a home like this. The door was metal, and showed signs that it had been through numerous repairs. It seemed out of place here. My eyes caught the remains of what seemed to be the old door leaning against the interior of the living space. There were burn marks and splintered furrows on its surface. Had something tried to force its way in here? I was alarmed, and my attention went back to my benefactor.

Yevgeni was searching through a rucksack on the table. I was able to dimly recognize that it was mine. He removed something that caught a beam of sunlight from a small, high window, causing a scatter of rainbow light across the room. He held it up with a gloved hand, examining it.

It was a crystal star about the size of my palm. It had many points, and seemed cut from a solid diamond. Its brilliance was astounding, and it was likely worth a governor's fortune.

"And it is." He answered my thought again with a whisper, and walked back over to me, holding the object between a thumb and forefinger. I pulled the animal skin over me, insecure.

"Where did you get this? Do you remember?" He asked me, holding the star. It had nine points, I could see now. He offered it to me, and I took it in my right hand.

The jewel was mesmerizing, almost hypnotic in its brilliance. It was familiar. I had seen it before, but where? I wasn't sure. Curious, I handled the jewel. It scattered tiny prismatic points of light across the room with every turn. It was beautiful. I remained in blurry half awareness from whatever had poisoned me earlier, and I had only vaguely registered his question. When Yevgeni did not hear a response to his queries, he knelt down near the bed, and looked at me pointedly. I jumped when I heard him speak next, as it wasn't in voice.

_Can you speak this way, my angel Cora?_

I gasped as I heard the sudden voice in my head. I briefly let the crystal star drop, but to my surprise, it remained suspended in midair above my chest. Yevgeni did not seem surprised, and was watching me intently. The briefest hint of a smile pulled at his lips. He sat on the edge of the bed, careful to not disturb me. A headache began to blossom at the side of my temple.

_Try it now, go on. Look at me._

I looked at him. He smiled, this time more widely. I noticed that his eyes were dampening. There was an odd giddiness about him, but a reluctance to emote. Somehow, I could tell he was speechless with happiness. It shown through him light the twinkling light of the floating crystal star before me. He nodded. I felt a dampness under my nose. Another nosebleed?

_Speak to me. Use this voice instead._

My nosebleed had begun to trickle down over my lips, but I did not part them when I spoke back.

_Your name is Yevgeni. _I stated, thinking as loud as I could. It made sense in a mysterious way. Could he hear me? My headache began to worsen.

_It is. Don't tax yourself. You're very weak. Now, let go of the star._

Was I holding the star aloft? I cut off my attention. It fell to the fur skin with a gentle pat. Oh.

Yevgeni smiled again, an a small tear fell from his eye. He reached over to touch my hand. "I was right. You're just a human psyker. They were all wrong," he said quickly. My headache pulled across my temples, and I closed my eyes and bonelessly rested my head. I didn't bother to clean my bleeding nose. I realized I was still indeed very tired.

"I don't know how you got here, or why all of this happened, but I'm happy you're here. Cora from Coranin! I found you," he spoke warmly. "You're going to need to rest. You almost died," he fussed. He took the crystal star in a gloved hand, and placed it in a pocket in his coat. That coat was too warm for the summer, I thought once again. Why was he wearing such a garment?

"I just need to rest," I said muzzily. Sleep was edging its way into my mind. I was exhausted. I could worry about all of this after I rested. My father had always told me that a bleary mind makes mistakes, and to always get a good night's sleep before heading out to trade. Maybe this was still a dream, and I would wake up in my home, safe and happy and fed in the warmth of the summertime. My family would be there again, and everything would be fixed. This was all just a nightmare.

"Rest is good, of course," the man affirmed. There was a pregnant pause, and then a "hmm" sound. It appeared he was choosing his words carefully. "We'll attend to questions and the mystery of how you got all the way up here when you wake. I'm very glad the Inquisition doesn't make regular stops here, seeing how strong you appear to be. Your clothes are too thin for the mountain snow."

I forced my eyes open; the illusion of the man I knew as Yevgeni was still there. He wore a peculiar expression on his face. A question rallied as I wiped a hand under my nose. It was red with fresh blood. "Where is this place?" I dared to ask. Something was not right, I thought again, observing the strange wood of the room, feeling the unfamiliar air, and observing the strange winter clothes of the man next to me. A man that I had never and always known all at the same time.

He did not answer immediately. "You really do not know, do you?" I slowly shook my head. Oh no. What had happened?

"Worry not, my angel. I assure you, my home is far from danger, part of a remote abandoned listening station in what the locals call the Tine Mountains." Yevgeni's tone was desperately reassuring as I felt him pat my forehead again. I closed my eyes, trying to will the horror away. I began to shake my head in disbelief. No. No. No.

The Tines? No, that couldn't be real. I had only seen the Tines as crude pictures in geography books, and as a series of raised bumps on a globe when I would visit my tutor in the stone tower for my studies.

The Tines were on the opposite side of the world. Before I fell into a delirious sleep once again, I remembered a notation embellished at the base of an illustration of jagged, snow capped mountains, impossibly far away and wickedly intimidating in their mystery. Strange flying creatures on bat wings accompanied every drawing, threatening in the sky above the clouds.

"The mountains of Tine at the gateway of forever. Beyond the oceans and embracing the stars. Monsters dwell there, their strength ceasing never."

I prayed that my dreams would only be dreams as I sank into the black again.


	10. Impossibilities

I sat up in bed, suddenly awake. Escaping the tether of my memory, a dream of a two headed creature with sharp beaks sculpted of raw magic. It had known all things past and future, and had shown me many visions. I saw a city of blood, revelers dancing in the streets as they threw themselves before me. I saw an ocean of reeds parting before my feet as I danced, my footsteps breaking the land beneath me. I felt as if the dream was profound, and that I should remember it. Alas, as the way of dreams exists, so to does the fate of this one flee into nothingness.

It was dark. I blinked in the crisp dark of the small living space. It was still cold, and I pulled a fur skin over my body. My head ached as if I had drank too much wine the previous night. I turned on my side. The solitary small window on the wall to my right shone faintly with the light of the moon. A faint lash of color danced across the shadow of the night sky, and quickly vanished.

Nearby, I heard breathing. Laying asleep on a cushioned bench nearby was Yevgeni, wrapped in the unusual skin of a foreign white-furred creature. He was gently snoring. Aside from his breathing, the night was nearly silent. A small hearth crackled nearby, filling the space with a mild warmth. It was still too cold, and the air still too weak, just like me. I found that I was breathing as if I had recovered from an illness of the lungs, and it felt as if the air held less life than before. Had I been asleep for a long time?

Bundling the brindled skins around my body, I swung my legs onto the floor. My bare feet touched a rough cloth rug, and I warily stood up, nervous of my own mental and physical stability. Everything seemed unusually normal. I searched for signs of an illusion of my screaming father in the walls, like home, and found nothing but wooden patterns dancing in unusual marbled knotted shapes. I listened for my mother's voice on the wind, cajoling me outside. Aside from being unfamiliar, the space appeared entirely unremarkable. Normality never looked so reassuring, I sighed inwardly.

Although it was dark, I turned about and investigated the space. Yevgeni was correct. This was not the doctor's house. An angled wooden ceiling loomed above me, and occasional furs of large unusual beasts were hung on the walls. An earthy, woody scent hung in the air. It was not unpleasant. The space was about five paces squared, with a closed wooden door near the headboard of my bed, and a metal door presumably leading outside. The occasional whine of the wind against both the small window above me, and through the gaps in the metal door added to the ambiance. The breeze was cold.

I pulled the dappled furred skin from my bed, and wrapped it about myself like a cloak. Yevgeni had mentioned the Tine Mountains. Was I actually there through some hiccup of reality? The world was different now. Time and space now often behaved like mischievous children playing at humanity like toys, but to be transported across the _entire world_? I had seen nothing so dramatic before. There was also the mystery of the man who slept nearby. Who was he? I had seen him in my dream visions, yes, but he had said that he had seen me many times before. He even called me an angel. I padded softly to where he dozed on the bench nearby.

Here, he was now about 35 years old, clean shaven, and with a face lined like one who sees too much before their time. His distinctive blue green eyes were moving rapidly under their lids, likely dreaming. There was something achingly familiar about him, as if his identity was just at the tip of my imagination. Why couldn't I remember? He was on his right side, his arms reaching outward for a lost companion. In one hand held the metal Inquisitor's rosette. Curious. He had said earlier that the Inquisition was hunting him. Why did he possess that rosette if he did not work for the Inquisition? Between the things he had said, and our apparent location, there were many questions still to be answered.

He had called me a "psyker". That couldn't be true, could it? I decided not to think about it right now.

I bundled my furs about me, shuddering, and looked toward the metal door. It whined against a sudden gust of wind, causing the fire to flicker briefly. The Tine Mountains. I had always had a wish for adventure, but to suddenly be thrown across the world on an unknown current disturbed me. Still, I was very curious. I stepped gingerly toward the door. My feet found cold stone as I approached. I wanted to see where I was. With a shy, shaking hand, I unlatched the door. Slowly, I pushed it open.

Mountains. Cold. Snow. Wind. Night!

My hair whipped about me in a sudden gust of wind, and I stepped forward, barefoot into the cold snow. I was not prepared for the majesty of the scenery before me. A sea of stars painted the sky above me as if from a divine paintbrush. A moon, pale and beautiful, gave light. Glittering points of crystalline brilliance of all the colors of the rainbow watched down from above on me against the indigo-dark canvas of the sky. A lash of blue green, like a serpent, danced across the stars like a flame. Below the majestic sky, rough mountains challenged the heavens with hard, snow covered peaks. They rose above me. I was in a small valley between two shadowed peaks. A rough path lead outward from the dwelling, and downhill into a small copse of tall trees not unlike the ones that made up this dwelling.

I realized I had been stunned breathless by the landscape, and exhaled. Indeed, I was someplace new! I continued to study the stars and position of the moon, trying to remember my astronomy lessons. I hadn't been taught about the movements of the heavens to discern position, as that had been Galan's interest. Something else was different here besides being in an unknown location, I thought as I noted familiar constellations in unfamiliar locations. Something big.

The red Anomaly wasn't in the sky. The red glow wasn't here. Normally, it would be drowning the landscape in a vile purulent red, but instead, all was blessedly normal. Perhaps it was on the other side of the world? That couldn't be it. The red Anomaly always at least tinged the nearest horizon with faint wisps of pink, even if mostly invisible in the landscape. The moon also appeared normal, and shown like a kind eye above me. Had the world healed? Was everything fixed again?

"Impossible..." I whispered to the sky. I dared a smile.

"Come inside. Its cold out there, and I don't want to lose you again," I heard behind me. I turned. Yevgeni was there, also bundled in furs against the chill. His wispy blond hair was blown with the wind. I examined his features again, and found traces of the frightened boy on the battlefield as I walked back into the cabin. Behind me, Yevgeni closed the door and latched it. "Don't go far. The cold is dangerous in the night out here," he instructed as he touched my shoulder, leading me back to bed. I sat back down on the crude mattress, and he stood ahead near me. "Best to rest until morning. How are you feeling?"

"I'm alright, just a little out of sorts," I answered. In actuality, I had many questions, but I still wasn't thinking clearly and still did not quite trust my surroundings. If they remained until morning, I would address them, I decided. Perhaps the Anomaly was hiding somewhere? Perhaps this was also a dream? I needed to be patient. If the world was "normal" again, I would be overjoyed, but I needed to be certain.

And if it was normal again, I had a long walk ahead of me.

My benefactor nodded, and wanly smiled. "You wanted to see the lights, didn't you? They're stunning up here, I must say," he said, an odd happy chirp in his voice.

"The lights?" I was genuinely confused.

"Some worlds have lights in the sky if you go far north or south. We are far north. When you spoke of a warm summer marsh, I figured you were not from around here," he stressed the word "here" with a cough.

The village I lived in was in the southern hemisphere of our world. How had I traveled such a distance?

Yevgeni smiled warmly again. "I want to understand how you got here. We have time now. Do not worry."

A buzzing static sound nearby. I recognized the rare noise of a vox. A warbled voice was heard.

"Station eight-one, this is station eight-seven, do you read, over?" Yevgeni turned to a small metal box that had sprung to orange light on the table near my knapsack. A static crackle.

"This is station eight-one, over..." An unknown voice answered back.

"Unusual disturbance on bands nine-nine, and nine-nine-nine. Adjust frequency. What do you read, nine-nine-one, over?"

A pause. Yevgeni walked to the table and pulled out a chair. He sat down, and leaned over the vox, listening.

"Static, again. What's going on down there? Ninth time this month. Over..."

"No idea. Over."

Another pause.

"I don't know why the Inquisition won't send more this way. The markers on that band are suspicious. I'm tired of being the only one who cares. Over."

A longer pause. It felt awkward.

"Well, you know, we're entering the festival season down there, and you know how those guys are. Someone probably spilled amesac over their unit again. Over," the voice chuckled.

Brief laughter from the other man in response. Yevgeni's brow furrowed.

"Wouldn't be the first time. Next time command contacts me, I'm going to see if I can get a transfer. Those boys in Verronus have the best posting. Over."

Yevgeni shook his head, smiling, and reached behind the box to flip a switch. It became silent again.

I was silent for another reason. Verronus didn't exist anymore. In its place, for months now, I had only seen the red bruise in the sky. The scholar had said, half mad and giggling in our last lesson in the stone tower, that the Anomaly had "eaten" Verronus, that all its grand spires had drowned in the afterbirth of a god beyond time. Verronus _should not exist anymore_.

_Verronus should not exist anymore... _I thought loudly.

Yevgeni's eyes were of ice as he mirrored the shock that was, no doubt, carving its way across my face.


End file.
